


Thirteen Taps of the Ivory Beak

by monicawoe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 11:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20693108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe
Summary: Death is a transient thing. The bird knows this, because she herself is both alive and not. Her creator made her this way, not by choice but because of who he is.(a companion piece to de_nugis' brilliant ficThe Holy Grail Birdtold from the point of view of the bird)





	Thirteen Taps of the Ivory Beak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [De_Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Holy Grail Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670155) by [De_Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis). 

> If you haven’t already, please read de_nugis fic, [The Holy Grail Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670155) first.  
Because: 1. this companion piece ficlet of mine won’t make much sense without it and 2. [The Holy Grail Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670155) is likely to be one of the best Sam Winchester fics you've read all year.

Death is a transient thing. The bird knows this, because she herself is both alive and not. Her creator made her this way, not by choice but because of who he is.

He's shed death too many times to be mortal anymore, and he's bound to all of creation in a way few other beings are. As he lies here, eyes closed, with no breath and no pulse, she does what she was made to do. There are no trees here, in this empty holding cell—the only place the world could think to put her maker. He's beyond the afterlife, those rules don't apply anymore. But at the moment, he's not aware of where he is, or that he is, and he's certainly not aware of her. And so, she does what she was made to do—she hunts for life, pecking at the boundaries of the space between.

The staccato rhythm of her beak isn't quite a heartbeat, but it'll have to do. She may not have a heart herself, but her maker does and if his cannot beat, then she'll keep the rhythm going some other way.

They're alone here, the two of them, apart from the rest of the world. But he can't stay here, and neither can she. Even if he wants to rest here forever, she does not. She has her own free will, after all—a gift given in her resurrection. Self-sacrifice is her maker's way, but hers had been an act of his devotion alone.

She came here then too, to this non-place, a half-step apart from the other God's creation. Until her maker called her back with intent, a divine scrap of skin, and his unending well of grief. She didn't stay here long that time, only long enough to know that she was alone. But she's not alone now.

Time doesn’t pass in any concrete way for her, she does not age, nor does she run the risk of dying without food—her creator saw to that—but she has no intention of spending the rest of her existence here. She likes trees, and grubs, and sunlight.

Her beak strikes the wall and the sounds on the other side are muted and solid. They're blocked off and protected here, but imperfectly so. There are cracks, there always are. Cracks define creation, as they do the bark of trees. It's the cracks that reveal what's underneath, the truth of existence lain bare.

So she taps and pecks and searches until she finds it, the hollow tone she's looking for—a weaker spot in the metaphysical stitching of this pocket dimension; raps and knocks until she reaches what's underneath, dark matter soft as decaying wood. With three more heavy blows of her beak, she pierces through, makes a hole, and light streams in, the beam illuminating a dot on her maker's brow.

She needs to make more. Twelve more. What are numbers to birds? They're in the laddered strands of her DNA, in the cogs of her gears. She may not count the way we do, but she knows the patterns and rhythms the numbers make, and the numbers know her. She is one and her maker thirteen.

As she works on opening the second hole, near another slight fissure, something stirs on the other side. It's a passing brush of consciousness: another being, something beyond life and death, like them. It isn't trying to get in, from what she can sense. It may not even know they're there. She hops back to the first hole and peers through with one eye. Whatever it is, it's enormous, and swims through the brightness beyond with a glistening cetacean body, backlit by an undefined sun. A primordial ocean, with a watcher. Not their world, not even close. But it's a waypoint. She moves back to the second hole and pounds her beak until the light pours through, then looks. There's nothing but light, a swirling, dizzying mass of it, a nebula of galaxies not yet formed. The building blocks of life. Closer but not there yet.

The third hole takes longer, and she feels a chill when she pierces through, not icy, natural cold, but the absolute kind—the absence of life. She pulls back, letting out a frustrated trill. Something on the other side hears her, pauses near their little box with a rustle of a heavy cloak. The air whistles as though sliced by a scythe, and an eye looks through the hole at her, all-seeing. It blinks once, slowly, and she feels something like acknowledgment or maybe even affection pass through her as another beam of light shines in, landing on her maker’s open palm.

Ten more to go.

It's slow work. She's not aware of time in minutes, days, months—all human constructs—but she knows the pulses of her beak and how much effort it takes to pierce through the layers. Each hole is harder than the one before and by the time she breaks through the last one, she's given thirteen by thirteen.

When her maker wakes, he apologizes to her. She can't understand his words but she speaks his language, and his sorrow, his shame, is a constant thing that he wears like a cloak on his overlong body. She flies to him, lands on his chest and leans close as he admires her works. Hesitantly, carefully, Sam’s heart begins to beat again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to quickreaver for the beta <3


End file.
